Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because is public domain. I am grateful.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 40

Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used
to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely
sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot
be human. That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one
way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger
reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.
If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural
has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition:
that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of
Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but
she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of
lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth
or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a
little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.